Is that a cucumber in your …

So the beginning of a trip through the Cucumber-files. Let’s start with the obvious. Innuendo and anything having a remotely sexual angle. The papers and web sites still have attention to attract, even if they’re short staffed, and presumably readers are more likely to be hot and bothered in the summer.

And basically, the sex angle always works.

‘Techno-doo-hickeys mean less sex‘ the always populist tabloid VG could reveal on its web site. After setting the rigorous scientific bar with the very first ‘word’, the second impression is that this really isn’t news, is it? I mean, as in not at all?

The core of the story behind this headline was that a British study carried out by pharmaceutical giant Bayer had found that ‘technology‘ was cited by 28 percent of the women polled for them having less sex. And ‘doo-hickeys’ are especially to blame, technologically speaking.

Email and the Internet were killing the urge, with iPhones and smartphones pointed out as the most unromantic gewgaws. VG quickly responded by ringing up Norwegian sexologist Gro Isachsen to map the state of the nation’s preference for thingamajigs to sex. And, yes, it’s happening here as well.

Isachsen said she often had clients that complained that ‘they were so obsessed with their doo-hickeys’ that it was interfering with their libido, and that this was not exclusively a male problem. Mobile phones, and the link they could provide to make social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter more accessible, often meant less time to spend with their partner, female or male.

With so many opportunities for extroversion thanks to these ‘thingies’*, their playthings instead become a source of distraction and stress. But men were singled out as being especially distracted by Internet porn – another shocker to the online news audience, I’m sure.

What to do when the very fabric of modern social life means the unraveling of personal relationships as we once knew them? In Norway, the answer is to make fun of the Swedes.

In a short but surprisingly joint news item from Norway and Sweden’s main news wires, we also learned that there is ‘More impotence under non-Socialist governments‘.

The number of Swedes who have ‘fallen ill and impotent’ has gone up since Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt has taken office. Besides a rise (?) in impotence, Swedes are also suffering from more ulcers, migraines, depression and high blood pressure since their change in government.

This short but somewhat demented article went on to note that divorce is up 9 percent under the current Swedish government, and abortions are up five percent. The piece ends with a nearly ironic bit of ‘the other side of the story’ by noting that ‘Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt would not go along with the idea that Swedes had become less happy under a non-Socialist government.’

Oh, and in case you were wondering, Norway has a left-wing government coalition, thank you very much.

* I am not exaggerating the number of times electronic or technological devices were referred to in such terms.

Greetings also from Ken Regan—I hope what Chris Dickson is talking about was not too dire. Saw your name in the Euro Club Championship roster—you believed Movsesian, good luck tomorrow (i.e., today). Am happily occupying your initial square, just Google me to find out where—and you’ll see I’m a fellow WordPress blogger.